


Tell Me About My Mother

by soulshrapnel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Family Issues, Gen, grumpy pregnant leia, pretty much literally just the skywalkers watching a vid and having feelings about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulshrapnel/pseuds/soulshrapnel
Summary: Luke Skywalker has reconciled with the ghost of his father, but he's eager to know who is mother was, too. Leia Organa Solo is not so enthused. Padmé Amidala is a woman Leia already idolized - but to accept that Padmé is the mother she faintly remembers, Leia will have to look at those memories in a whole new light.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59
Collections: May the 4th Be With You Star Wars Fanworks Exchange 2020





	Tell Me About My Mother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shesasurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shesasurvivor/gifts).



> This is for shesasurvivor for May the 4th! I've done informal fic exchanges with friends before, but this is my first time with a more organized fic exchange of this nature. The prompt was:
> 
> _Luke and Leia searching for answers post-ROTJ, such as:_
> 
> _-More information about Anakin Skywalker  
>  -Attempts to find out who their biological mother is  
> -More information about Padme Amidala  
> -Do they find the Naberrie family?  
> -Do they find Ahsoka?  
> -Will Leia train to become a Jedi?_
> 
> _This can be Legends or Disney Canon, or a complete AU_
> 
> So many possibilities! My first idea was to have them go to Naboo and look for the Naberries, but then the fic veered off in this other direction... (One day I will be able to write something that isn't just Large Piles Of Skywalker Trauma In A Relationship Context, but apparently today is not that day!)
> 
> Anyway, I hope the fic is even remotely satisfying! Here you go.

It took Luke a few tries, what with everything else that was going on, before he worked up the nerve to ask about his mother.

Luke's days were full of the kind of excitement he'd always dreamed of. Celebrations with the other Rebels. Preparations for all the things the New Republic would need. Fights with the remnants of the Empire and with other hostile forces - though often enough, given Luke's powers, he'd been finding ways to head those off before they turned violent. And in between these, there were quests on his own. He'd been going on journeys to uncover the secrets of the Jedi and the Force. To try to understand this vast, beautiful thing he'd pledged his life to.

It was a full life. There wasn't much room for ghosts in it, but Luke longed to see his ghosts more often. He wanted Ben's wry stories and Yoda's guidance. Every once in a while, in still and sacred places, he still had them. But not often. Force ghosts didn't tolerate much reality, or maybe reality didn't tolerate much of them; Luke wasn't sure how it worked. Most of the time, he was on his own.

And then there were nights, like this one, when he saw his father.

He was on a wooded world tonight, resting after a long battle for that world's freedom. The locals had put him up in a small shelter high up in the trees, a room to himself with its own small balcony, which was a mark of honor among them. He hadn't wanted to sleep yet, so he'd shaken some incense into a stone bowl and set it alight, and when his mind was clear, he'd felt his father's presence behind him.

"Father," he said, smiling.

"Son."

It had been awkward at first, having a ghost for a father. A dead and emotionally complicated man, no longer capable of affecting the physical world; a man who Luke instinctively loved, but didn't know very well. But a peaceful rapport had grown between them over time. Anakin didn't always want to talk, wasn't any good with words, and Luke didn't always need him to use them. Sometimes Luke would tell him the news of the day, the adventures he'd been on, and he'd watch his father's proud smiles and protective scowls, the way his mood turned in an instant. Sometimes they'd just sit together. Meditating. Looking out at the world. Luke could feel the fractured glow of his father's mind in the Force, and Anakin could feel him the same way. Often that was enough.

He finished his meditation, savoring the fragrance of the smoke and the night-sounds of the woods. Luke had learned to like wild places. The desert on Tatooine had been so empty. Woods were different. Woods were full of growth and green, so many little lives so interconnected with each other. He could feel those lives, if he emptied his mind and focused, and they enchanted him.

He took a final long breath, and then he turned to face his father.

Anakin looked peaceful today. When he'd died, he'd looked incredibly old, sickly and helpless, though he couldn't have been more than forty or fifty. But for some reason his ghost had transformed back to the way he'd looked at Luke's age. A Jedi warrior in his prime, with a shock of tumbling auburn hair and a scar over one eye. It wasn't as disorienting as it ought to have been; people like them could recognize each other by feel. He could have looked stranger than this, younger than this, and he still would have felt like Luke's father.

"You did well today," Anakin said. "I can feel it."

Luke smiled. "This is a good place." It had retained so much life and goodness even under occupation, despite the forces bearing down on it. Now, without those Imperial forces, it was better.

Anakin's face did something small and wry. "It is now."

This was Anakin on a good day. Melancholy, but calm. Able to appreciate the good in what was around him. There were worse days. On Anakin's bad days, Luke didn't dare bring up anything upsetting; his father's demons already weighed so heavily on him. But this might be the kind of day where he could try it.

"Father," he said, "there's something I've wanted to ask you."

Anakin's face looked directly at Luke, earnest and serious. "You can ask anything of me, my son."

"Who was my mother?"

Despite his promise, Anakin immediately looked away. Even the feel of him in the Force seemed to close itself up, a wall coming down. Luke could feel the anguish poorly concealed behind those barriers, the flames of awful memories licking at his father's mind.

Luke felt guilty, but not surprised. Anakin got like this whenever Luke asked about his life. What had it been like, being a Jedi? What had Obi-Wan been like back then? Where had Anakin come from before that? Even the most innocent-seeming questions produced these walls of flame. As for Anakin's time on the Dark Side, Luke had known better than to even try. For the most part, he didn't mind not asking. Anakin's life had been a horror, and Luke could understand not wanting to relive it. Luke could let him have his boundaries.

But he couldn't keep away from this one question. Leia had vague, dim memories of their mother, but Luke had nothing. All his life, he'd longed for both a father and a mother. And shouldn't an orphan be allowed to know who his mother was?

Anakin couldn't look Luke in the eye, but Luke felt him steeling himself, collecting his courage, and he waited.

"I-" said Anakin, and his voice seemed to fail him. "She was - your mother was a good person, Luke. You came from love."

Luke understood why Anakin needed to tell him that first. He knew the kind of thing people would imagine, if they were told that Darth Vader fathered children. But he'd never really doubted that part. Anakin had been a good person too before his fall.

He didn't need the reassurances. He wanted _her._ A name. A face. A story.

Anakin tried again, and then faltered. He visibly shuddered. "I can't do this. You should not hear it from me."

Luke frowned. He didn't want to push further, didn't want to hurt his father. He opened his mouth to clarify, but Anakin interrupted, speaking over him tonelessly.

"I did not kill her," he said. "But I was made to believe I did. And, given how it happened, I may as well have." He clenched his fist against the wood of the room - could ghosts feel textures? Luke didn't know - and then turned, steeling himself fully, glaring. "Go to Naboo. Ask them about Padmé Amidala. _They_ will have what you want."

Luke let his breath out slowly, realizing what his father had given him. She had a _name._ His mother had a name and a home planet. That was enough to go on. Anakin's grief for her ran even deeper than Luke had expected, and yet - he'd given him these things.

"Thank you, father," he said sincerely. "I'll do that. I didn't mean for this to hurt you."

" _You_ did not cause this pain." Anakin was scowling, still, but Luke could feel those mental walls thinning a little, the hurt beginning to ease. "You deserved a mother."

And if Luke hadn't agreed with that, if he hadn't felt he had a right to this despite the pain, he knew he wouldn't have asked in the first place.

*

"You want to go _where?_ " Leia demanded, as Luke looked at her with his most earnest expression. Leia felt at ease around Luke, but she'd learned not to trust those big-eyed, boyish, innocent looks. Luke gave her those when he was up to something.

"To Naboo. To find out about our mother."

"I have work to do."

Morning had dawned, and they were sitting in a nook of the quarters Leia and Han had been given, a high-up wooden room in the forest like Luke's, eating breakfast before the day's larger tasks began. There were more worlds to liberate after this one, more remnants of the Empire to scare away. More politics to do.

Leia felt ill as she often did these days. There was a child growing inside her, still a little too early to announce to the world yet, and it had the effects pregnancy usually had. But she had been in reasonably good spirits until Luke barged in.

Once, Leia would have given anything to know more about her birth mother. She remembered that woman only in the inchoate way of an infant. More the impression of beauty than any detail. A grimace of grief so intense that Leia's infant mind could barely take it in. And yet love, too. Love, so strong it hurt, enveloping her. Love for Leia, and for someone else, too. Leia's birth mother overflowed with love, and somehow that love was what frightened Leia in her memory, what hurt her most of all.

Leia's real parents, the ones who'd raised her, had known who that woman was was. Her mother had been a good woman, they assured her, brave and wise, and she'd loved Leia very much. But her name was a secret that was not safe to tell. Later, when Leia was older and the galaxy was a better place, they hoped they could tell her more.

It had been one of the thousands of things she'd mourned, piecemeal. Leia would never hold a music box like the ones her parents loved again. She would never see Appenza Peak. She would never know the name of the woman who birthed her. These little things were the ones that came to Leia with stabs of pain, when she lay awake at night, because real grief for all of Alderaan at once was simply too much to hold.

Then she'd learned who her biological father was, and suddenly she hadn't wanted to know anymore.

Luke looked at her, earnestly, piercingly. Looking just a little bit _through_ her, as he'd started to do sometimes. Leia was still getting used to the idea that both of them were strong in the Force. Luke had always felt like family to her. But the thought that in some latent way she shared his power - _Vader's_ power - disturbed her more. Leia had been taught her whole life how to handle power, but this might be one source too many.

"You're afraid," he said. "Of what you might find."

"I'm not afraid," she snapped. She turned and went back to packing her things, which was what she'd been doing before Luke came in. On to the next mission, and the next, and the next. Eyes front. Look back for too long and she might fall into a sadness like her unnamed mother's, so big she could never escape. "But we have a Republic to rebuild. It's not helpful, wasting time on people who..."

People who were dead already. And people who'd never deserved to live.

"Okay," said Luke, shrugging and settling back. He might be eerie, but he never really pushed. "If you don't want to go, I can just take Artoo. I don't really know how much I'll find anyway. All I've got is a planet and a name."

Leia looked at him sideways. She didn't want to know, and yet... "What name?"

"Somebody named Padmé Amidala."

Leia went very, very still. She felt the blood drain from her face.

"What?" said Luke, sensing it.

"I know that name, Luke."

Luke scrambled up to her, his eyes wide and eager again. "Really? Where?"

Leia swallowed hard. "My parents taught me about her. I just - never realized. Padmé Amidala was a Senator in the Clone Wars. Before that, she was the queen of Naboo - their planet traditionally elected child queens. She was a good queen, well loved. She used to work closely with my father in the Senate. She was one of the founders of the Rebel Alliance, but she never lived to see it. She died the day the Empire rose."

"How did she die?" Luke asked.

"I don't know."

She'd seen a vid of the funeral, though. She'd seen other vids of Padmé. Her real father, Bail Organa, had talked about her frequently. Leia had grown up hero-worshipping Padmé, along with many other figures; she'd wanted to be just like her. She'd never guessed, even when she looked at Padmé's face in the vids. Her infant eyes hadn't remembered faces in quite that way. But it made sense now, immediately and deeply, the way Luke being her brother had made sense. She wasn't sure she liked it.

How could a woman who shone as brightly as Padmé Amidala be part of this story? How could a woman like Padmé have _borne Darth Vader's children?_

"This is great," Luke said. "Everyone on Naboo must know about her. There are probably whole holobooks, vids..."

"We don't even have to go to Naboo," said Leia. "Just wait until we get to a planet with a decent library. That'll have everything you want to know."

*

The closest planet with a decent library, as they found out when they looked at the map back on the Rebel flagship, was called Menneli. It was a mostly-human, temperate, peaceful world. So that was where Luke went, with Han and Leia dragging themselves reluctantly along. Menneli's capital city had one of the largest libraries in the sector, a vast hall lined with towers of holobooks as far as the eye could see. The locals rolled out a red carpet for the visiting heroes of the Rebellion, no matter how Luke insisted that they were here on personal business and didn't want a fuss. When he hesitantly mentioned to the head librarian that they were looking for materials on Padmé Amidala's life, a pile of documentary vids were in his hands within fifteen seconds.

They ended up in a private study room with a small holoprojector, going through the vids one at a time. Han lounged in his chair and drank caf, pretending not to be interested. Leia shifted through a bewildering array of emotions, occasionally excusing herself to vomit. Luke sat entranced.

The vid at the top of the pile was called _Padmé Amidala: The People's Queen_. Through news footage and interviews, it told the story of Padmé's early life with the Naberrie family and her rise to power, before launching into the Invasion of Naboo. Queen Amidala, as she was called then, had only been fourteen at the time. Her planet had been occupied by something called a Trade Federation, and she had gone before the Galactic Senate to ask for help. The vid showed her dressed in bizarre finery, with her hair bound up and hanging from an elaborate headdress, arguing her case with the poise of any adult queen.

"I will not defer," she said, as the Senate proposed a long investigation into whether or not the invasion had really happened. Her voice was firm and clear, and carried a faint, exotic accent. "I have come before you to resolve this attack on our sovereignty now. I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee."

"She's so young," Luke murmured, awestruck.

Luke had grown up thinking he was nobody special, just another bored boy on a farm. It had been a succession of shocks, learning about his real parents. Leia had told him that his mother was a queen, but it hadn't really sank in until he saw it in the vid. She wasn't much more than a child, but she seemed so powerful. So full of dignity in the midst of her people's tragedy. So good.

"She's an idiot," said Leia beside him.

Luke gave her a confused look. He didn't understand the sudden venom, the anger and shame that had risen up in her mind. He and Leia had never seen eye to eye about Anakin, but Leia had idolized Padmé. This would be a good memory, he'd thought, of a woman Leia wouldn't have a problem loving. Wouldn't it?

"I don't know why I didn't see it before," said Leia, gesturing dismissively at the screen. "Look who she's _with._ "

Luke peered at the screen. On the Senate platform with Padmé sat several others, including an older human man in a Coruscant senator's robes. The man looked distinguished and dignified. There was something unsettlingly familiar about him, but Luke couldn't put his finger on it. Between her speeches, he leaned in to whisper in the queen's ear.

"That's Sheev Palpatine, Luke. That's the Emperor."

Luke stared at the man, and a chill went down his spine.

The Palpatine in the vid didn't look like the Emperor Luke remembered. But he knew in his bones that Leia was right. It was the same man. Naboo was his mother's planet, but Luke had known it was also the Emperor's; he just hadn't quite put those pieces together, or had the thought that the two of them would have both worked in the Senate at the same time. Luke's mother and the Emperor would have known each other, before he was Emperor, which meant - what?

As far as Luke knew, Leia had never met the Emperor in person. But Luke had. It still made him flinch, remembering the sear of Force lightning and the cold dark laughter in the air.

"I don't understand," he said.

"If this body is not capable of action," Queen Amidala continued in the vid footage, "I suggest new leadership is needed. I move for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum's leadership."

Across the huge chamber, senators rose to their feet, chanting excitedly for an immediate vote. Resentment against Chancellor Valorum must have been building for a long time.

"He used her," said Leia. "Palpatine used the invasion of Naboo to create the sympathy he needed to take Valorum's place. Either she was complicit, or she was too naive to see."

Luke looked again at the brave, poised girl in the vid. He couldn't sense her feelings, not across such a gulf of space and time. But he couldn't believe that she wasn't fully sincere, or that she had any idea who it really was that stood beside her.

"Nobody else saw it either," Han pointed out from where he slouched on the armchair next to them. "Did they? And she was just a kid. Can't blame a kid for believing what she's told."

"And you said she wanted to stop Palpatine," said Luke. "Later in her life, when she was a Senator and did know more. She helped found the Rebel Alliance."

"That doesn't matter," Leia snapped. She looked panicked. She had dug her fingers deeply into the arms of her chair, as if she might levitate out of it if she didn't hold herself. "Don't you see? It doesn't matter if she had good intentions. It's the result that matters. One Sith Lord used her for power and the other Sith Lord - used her."

Han leaned back in his chair and rolled his eyes slightly. "So the whole Rebel Alliance wasn't a good result? Or are you just mad that your mom liked scoundrels?"

Luke wasn't sure the significance of the word _scoundrels_ , but it clearly hit one of Leia's nerves. "You-" she spluttered. "I will _throttle_ you, you half-wit nerf-herder. I'm - going to the fresher."

She lurched out of her seat and made a hurried, awkward exit.

Han watched her go. "That's Darth Vader's daughter, huh? Never would have guessed."

"Han," said Luke warningly.

Han raised his hands in mock surrender. "This wasn't my idea, kid. I'm not the one who said we should blow our leave just to come down here for your family photos."

Luke sighed, still looking at the door. "Do you think I shouldn't have asked her to come?"

Han shook his head. "She's a grown woman. She could have turned the invitation down. I just don't think this is going to help. This all means something different to her than what it does for you."

"I know," said Luke, looking down at his knees.

Luke and Leia had never agreed about their family. Luke had thought, at first, that all he needed to do was explain what happened to Leia. He knew Darth Vader had hurt her more than anyone; he didn't expect them all to suddenly be friends. But he thought at least she'd grow to understand what had happened. Anakin Skywalker had been a hero once. It was Palpatine who'd turned him to the Dark Side, through a host of cruelties that Luke was only beginning to understand. And even then, there'd still been some tiny spark of good in him. There had been love, there had been self-sacrifice, and that had saved them both.

Luke couldn't explain how important that was to him. How it made his Jedi ideals feel real in ways they never had before. How letting go of hate, believing in the good in people, weren't just high-minded doctrines to him anymore. They were powerful enough to save the galaxy.

But Leia had refused to believe that story, even though she could feel Luke's mind, even though they were connected in the Force. She could not accept that there had been any good in Vader at the end. She believed that Luke believed it. That was as far as she could go.

Luke had learned to accept that about her. Leia was, as Han said, a grown woman. She was in charge of how she dealt with her pain, and her pain went much deeper than Luke's. She was a good person. If she wasn't ready to let go of her anger - and Leia might _never_ be ready - he could honor that, too.

But it had never occurred to him that her hate for Vader could go so deep that it would bleed over to their mother, too.

Han sighed. "I'm gonna give her a bit to cool off, and then I'll go talk to her."

"Do you think she's right?" said Luke, looking up. "Do you think it's wrong to feel love for someone who doesn't deserve it?"

Han paused, then shook his head. "No, if that was wrong we'd all be in trouble. Ask me sometime about my girlfriend who took over a crime syndicate. Shit happens. I think your whole thing with your father is _weird_ , but you do you, kid."

*

It took Leia longer than she wanted to admit to get out of the fresher. At least it was clean, not like some of the freshers she'd been stuck in lately. Better than the latrine pits that forest planet had used. And bigger than the facilities aboard a ship. She still felt sick, and in a foul mood, as she washed her hands and marched back out.

Han was waiting for her on the outside, leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. Leia liked Han's casual manner, so different from the royal protocols she'd grown up with. Even doing nothing but waiting outside a fresher, he had a roguish charm. But right now the word _roguish_ still made Leia want to throw things.

She did not want to talk about it.

"This baby," she said instead, "is going to kill me. It is literally going to rip out my insides. This had better all be worth it when it's born."

Han didn't look bothered. "You want to take a walk? Or do you want a medical droid?"

Leia sighed, grumbling audibly. She knew what he was really offering - a chance to go somewhere _else_ , away from Luke and these stupid vids, before she went back in and said anything else to her brother that she might regret.

"Let's walk," she said. "It looks like this place has a decent garden."

It did. Behind the library proper there was a little park, bursting with flowers native to this planet, rimmed with hedges and pools. There weren't too many people in it at this time of day, despite the stir their family had made when they arrived. They walked out the side door and onto one of the cobblestoned paths, which meandered past the water and under some ornamental fruit trees.

"I hear there's other things to see on Menneli," Han said casually. "Gundark racing. Concerts. Good shopping. We could leave Luke here, see the sights. He wouldn't mind."

"He would," said Leia, trying not to clutch her belly too obviously. The fresh air didn't help as much as she felt it ought to. "He'd be kind about it, but he wants me to understand the way he does."

"You think he's tried understanding the way you do?"

"I... I think so." Leia closed her eyes, forcing her breath to slow, focusing. Luke had been giving her lessons in how to use the Force, but it was slow going. He'd had so little training himself. She didn't think they'd have gotten anywhere without their innate sense of each other as twins. She focused on that sense now. When she calmed herself, she had no doubt about Luke's good intentions. "I think he mostly does understand. He just doesn't agree."

"Is that so bad? If you don't agree."

Leia gave him an uncertain look.

They were still walking slowly, but the nausea was bad enough that she was starting to visibly falter, her gait slowing. Han glanced at her, then at a bench nearby, shaded by the low, spread-out limbs of the local trees. "You want to sit down?"

"Please." She sank down onto the bench, grimacing. Leia didn't like feeling like this. There had been other times when she'd been too weak to move easily, and they weren't times she wanted to remember.

Han planted himself next to her casually, crossing an ankle over his knee. He leaned back to take in the scenery. No one was within earshot. "You want to know what I think?"

"I don't think I could stop you from telling me."

"My dad was crap," said Han matter-of-factly. He was always casual like this, talking about pain. Trying to shrug it off even as he voiced it. "Nobody's as crap as Darth Vader. Mine was just regular crap. You know the story. Around Corellia you get a lot of kids with crap parents. Different details, same problem. I've seen kids like Luke before. So desperate for a father they'll make up anything so they can feel like they have one."

"He's not lying," said Leia. Strange how she still had the urge to defend him. "He really believes it; I can feel that. He saw _something_ happen when Vader died. I just can't believe it's what he thinks it is."

Han shrugged. "What do you think it was?"

"I don't know. Maybe he thought he could beat the Emperor. Maybe he did want to save Luke, and Luke thought that meant he was sorry for everything else,. I don't think it really matters what happened. He's dead and I don't want to talk to him."

Han shrugged. "Back on Corellia, we figured you get to decide who's your family. Sometimes it's the people who bore you, sometimes it's the people who raised you. Sometimes it's neither or both. Sometimes it's your friends, your crew. But you pick for yourself. You don't have to let other people, even other people in your family, do the pickig for you. Luke can be your brother if you want him to be. And Luke can decide that Darth Vader's his father. Doesn't mean you have to decide the same thing."

Leia looked down at the grass, her lips compressing to a line. On Alderaan family had meant something bigger than an individual's choice. There had been love, but also legacy, responsibility, honor. Leia had been a princess because of her family, and a princess was meant to wisely serve her people. That had been her destiny, and her parents had taught her by example how to bear its weight. _That_ was what family meant. It wasn't something to choose or unchoose, just because you liked something else better.

"I _had_ a father," she said, low and flat.

She'd had two parents, both of them beautiful, strong, kind and wise. Darth Vader had taken them from her. It wasn't only him, but he'd been there in that moment, hard and pitiless, holding her still, and the rasp of his machine breath in her ears would be a part of it forever.

"Yeah," said Han. He quietly took her hand. She was too lost in grief to reciprocate. She loved him, she wanted him here, but it was all she could do not to snatch her hand away. "Yeah, I know."

Leia had two parents, and she'd also had another. The secret second mother she only faintly remembered. She'd loved that mother, too, knowing almost nothing about her. Beautiful and kind and sad, so sad, full of a love so strong it might break the world.

Full of a love that was partly for her. And partly for Luke.

And partly - somehow, in some way that boggled understanding - partly for Darth Vader.

She couldn't bear to think about it. About what kind of woman could possibly feel that way. And now she'd never be able to remember that mother without thinking of it. Wondering what the hell had happened. She wouldn't be able to hear about Padmé Amidala, her childhood hero, without wondering, and the wondering hurt so much. Darth Vader had taken her adoptive parents, and now he'd taken this away, too.

She hated him so much it felt like choking.

"So what about Padmé Amidala, huh?" Han prompted after a moment. "You sounded like you'd seen those vids before. But it'd be different to watch them. It's feel different now that you know."

"She was one of my heroes," said Leia in a low voice. "But I must have been wrong."

"People've been wrong about a lot of things." Han shrugged. "Good people, even. For all we know, maybe she died before she knew he was evil. Maybe-"

"Don't," Leia snapped. Her shoulders were crawling up around her ears. She didn't want to picture any of it, even the kindest versions. She wanted to get out of this garden, but she didn't know where to. Not back into the library, and the ship they'd come in on was too far away.

Besides, she didn't _have_ to wonder. If she searched her feelings, she knew exactly why that love in her mother's mind had hurt so much, why it had been so tinged with despair. Padmé had known. She had figured it out just a little too late.

"Okay." Han let out a breath. "You want to head out, then? Leave him to it?"

"No," said Leia. She wanted to finish thinking this through. "Not yet. It's just - if she was so smart, and so brave, and so able to make the whole Senate stand up and listen to her - I don't understand how she could have been fooled. I don't understand - why she couldn't have - just -"

Just figured it all out a few minutes sooner. Just done something clever that fixed it all. Just had her babies and lived, and kept moving, eyes front, instead of drowning in despair over a Sith Lord who wasn't worth loving. Just used all those powers she supposedly had, as a brilliant young Senator. Just saved everyone.

Leia had often asked herself why she hadn't done that on the Death Star. If she'd thought just a little bit faster. If she'd come up with a better answer than Dantooine, something that would shine just brightly enough in those awful men's minds to turn them away from Alderaan after all. She knew very well that there wasn't one. They'd set the whole thing up that way on purpose. She _knew,_ but it came to her anyway, on bad nights, when she lay awake too tense to sleep.

She hated herself on those nights, when her mind thought too late of what else she might have done. And here was her mother, now, in the washed-out bluish colors of the holovid. Another bright, brave woman who'd tried her best, and who'd watched the whole world come down in flames around her anyway.

It was no wonder Leia wanted to hate her.

She buried her face in Han's shoulder.

Han patted her tightly-braided hair and held her close. He knew what she needed. Leia Organa Solo did _not_ cry in front of people. But she allowed herself one long, hard shudder, and then a series of deep breaths, focusing on the leather-and-engine-oil smell of him. Han was real; that was part of what she loved about him. He spoke his mind. When he put his arms around her like this, it was because he was here and he cared, right now, right in this garden. They were here now. The rest was over. She could turn her eyes away from the rest.

At length, she drew herself back up.

"I want to go back in," she said. Her voice was steady. "I want to watch the rest."

"You sure?" said Han. His hands were still around her waist.

She nodded. "Just this one. Just to see."

*

They watched the end of _Padmé Amidala: The People's Queen_. The victory parade, after the invasion was defeated and Naboo belonged to its people again.

Parades were so often empty things. Leia had been forced to watch enough of the Empire's soulless marches, just long displays of troops and weaponry and patriotic music. She wouldn't have trusted this, either, if all she saw was the parade. But Leia knew this story by heart; her father had told it to her many times. The victory Padmé Amidala celebrated here, as she handed a bright orb to the heavyset Gungan beside her, was real. And it was not only her people's victory; Padmé herself had fought on its front lines. She'd cleverly defeated the leaders of the Trade Federation in her own palace. She'd forged an unprecedented alliance between her world's two sentient species against their common enemy. Leia herself, growing up, had aspired to that combination of courage and guile and compassion. Leading a world justly demanded no less.

Palpatine was there at the edge of this scene. He stood somewhere behind the queen, in a line of other officials and Jedi. But Leia could ignore him if she tried. It was necessary for him to be there, as the member of the Senate representing Naboo, but he held no other special place. Padmé didn't seem to spare him so much as a thought. It wasn't Palpatine she looked at as she glanced across the celebrating crowd with a bright, warm smile.

In among the Jedi in attendance, there was a tiny boy wearing a Padawan's braid, no more than nine or ten years old.

"That's him," Luke said, leaning forward excitedly, as the vid's narrator began to label and explain all the other famous people in attendance. "Leia. That's Anakin."

Leia shut her eyes tightly.

She didn't want to think about this. She didn't want to think about Darth Vader as a little boy. Everyone had been a child once; that was simple biology. Grand Moff Tarkin had been a child that size once. So had Palpatine. It didn't mean anything.

Whatever had happened with Anakin Skywalker - what innocence he might once have possessed, what terrible rises and falls had marked his life - that was Luke's puzzle to solve. Luke wanted to solve it; he'd made that choice freely. It didn't mean it had to be Leia's.

Leia couldn't redefine the term "family" so easily, not the way Han did. Bail and Breha Organa had raised her to be who she was, and that meant something. Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala had brought her into the world with their own bodies, and that meant something, too. It was why she had Luke. It was why she was strong in the Force. Leia very plainly could not choose her own family.

But she could choose what she wanted to do with it.

She took another long look at the girl in the holovid, still so young, so bright in her strange facepaint and her feathered gown. So seemingly happy. Leia had admired Padmé her whole life. Maybe she wasn't wrong.

Maybe Padmé had trusted the wrong people sometimes. Maybe she'd been touched by love and pain in ways Leia couldn't bear to think about. Maybe she'd been human, with flaws and with failures, with hopes for peace and justice that she'd only partway been able to fill, just like everyone else in the kriffing Rebellion.

Maybe it was okay, after all, for this girl to be her mother.

*

When Luke returned to his quarters aboard ship that night, he was a little bit surprised to find his father waiting. Normally it took more than this - special places, special rituals, certain states of mind. But the rules of ghosts weren't rigid. If Anakin felt strongly enough about something, if there was room for him to manifest without disturbing too much of the world, he might bend them.

He looked much the same as ever, translucent like a holovid, younger than he should have been, quiet and withdrawn. He was staring out the window, his back to Luke, with the long cloak of a Jedi hanging down behind him.

"Father," said Luke.

"Son." Anakin didn't turn. His voice was very soft. "You saw her."

"Yeah," said Luke. He smiled, feeling the odd protective tenderness that he and his father so often brought out in each other. Leia had left after that first documentary, and Han had gone with her, but Luke had stayed and watched much more. Archives of Padmé's career as a senator, for instance, and other perspectives on her life. "There's so much. We didn't even make it to Naboo yet, just the public archives, but - there's already so much."

All this so far was only the public story. If he could find Padmé's other surviving family, people who'd been there at the time, there would be even more to learn. Luke wanted that. He didn't think Leia would want to go with him, and that was all right. But Luke wanted to drink up every fact about his parents that he could.

Anakin didn't move from the window, but Luke could sense so many feelings in him, such a conflicted roil.

"She was beautiful," Luke added after a respectful pause. "And wise. And so strong. Thank you for telling me."

A shiver passed through Anakin's ghost of a body.

"I could have left with her," he said, grief straining his voice. "When she asked. It wasn't too late then. We could have raised you and Leia together. If I hadn't been so full of fear. If I'd listened..."

"You did listen, father," said Luke, soft and steady. "In the end."

After that, there was little else to say. Only the slow passing of the stars.


End file.
